Space Weather disruption of the near-Earth space- and ground-based systems is now accepted as having significant socio-economic impact , and is included in the UK National Risk Register for Civil Emergencies as a medium-high likelihood and medium impact civil emergency. Specifically, the UK National Risk Register identifies that "(c)urrent understanding is that a severe space weather event could have impacts upon a range of technologies and infrastructure, including power networks, satellite services, transport and digital control components" and that any industry relying on satellite services, that "(s)evere space weather can interrupt satellite services including Global Navigation Satellite Systems, communications, and Earth observation and imaging systems by damaging the space-based hardware, distorting the satellite signal or increasing the errors in ground-based receivers." The potential impacts of space weather on technological infrastructures, including power grids, satellite and ground communications and navigation systems, have generated world-wide interest at government levels in developing both forecasting and mitigation techniques and strategies. Indeed, the UK government is now seeking to establish a centre for space weather forecasting within the Met Office, who represent the state-of-the-art in forecasting terrestrial weather and can apply their 150 year heritage in forecasting to the field of space weather. The effects of extreme space weather can only be estimated since we do not know it's full extent. However, the potential total cost of an extreme Space Weather event has been estimated as around $2 Trillion in year 1 in the U.S. alone, with a 4-10 year recovery period . Quantifying the effects of Space Weather in all its forms is therefore of paramount importance. Less work has been undertaken in wider infrastructure sectors i.e. beyond those that coincide with technological infrastructures discussed above such as electricity distribution, communications and aviation. However, other infrastructure sectors exhibit important vulnerabilities to space weather, both being dependent on these technologies (e.g. GNSS, radio communication) through a disturbed ionosphere but also through sector-specific vulnerabilities. For example, Atkins has recently undertaken a study in relation to rail infrastructure, which has specific communication technologies and signal networks that are vulnerable to space weather. Therefore there is a need to consider sector vulnerability in more detail and this is particularly important for critical national infrastructure. Whilst much of this infrastructure has been examined, water is an area which merits increased attention. The water sector has extensive metal pipeline networks and is increasingly dependent on remote information collection and real-time control. The last two years of drought and extensive inland and coastal flooding has demonstrated the importance of effectively managing water. Moreover, the water sector uses UHF radio communication as an integral part of their operations and infrastructure. Since space weather is able to influence the propagation of signals through the modification and disturbing of the Earth's ionosphere, this represents an indirect way by which space weather can adversely influence the water sector operations and infrastructure. Atkins is the main stakeholder for this work, and Atkins is currently liaising with major water company clients on this issue. The wider stakeholder sphere will include the Environment Agency (as an asset manager and regulator), Ofwat, the Drinking Water Inspectorate, all water companies and water company supplies including consultants and the asset supply chain.

Our cities are criss-crossed with fibre-optic telecommunications networks. For system redundancy and after technological improvements have reduced the required bandwidth, much of the installed fibre is unused. This unused fibre is known as "dark fibre". We can use dark fibre to investigate the properties of the ground below our cities. Distributed Acoustic Sensing (DAS) systems fire laser pulses along fibre-optic cables, and record the back-scattered light. If the cable is stretched or compressed then the back-scattered light will arrive slightly later or earlier. By recording and mapping these changes, we can turn any fibre-optic cable into a geophysical sensor, recording any movements or vibrations along the cable with very high resolution. Seismic imaging is a well-established method to map the subsurface. The technique uses seismic sources such as a hammer strike or a special vibrating source to impart seismic energy into the ground. By recording the resulting vibrations that have reflected and/or refracted through the ground, we can build up an image of the subsurface. These images are useful for a broad range of applications, such as siting geothermal developments, understanding groundwater and drainage, assessing the likelihood of landslips, and detecting sinkholes. However, conventional seismic surveys rely on deploying a large array of geophone sensors across the survey area. This is often logistically challenging or impossible in urban areas. As a result, subsurface data under our towns and cities, perhaps the area where this data is needed most, is often lacking. Seismic imaging using DAS provides an alternative with enormous potential. Dark fibre cables are already installed in buried telecommunication networks, meaning our sensor is already in place and available at minimal cost. We can access the fibre-optic network, install a DAS unit in a secure location, and record the resulting seismic data along the length of the cables, without any need to deploy geophone sensors across the area of interest. Hence, DAS seismic acquisition using dark fibre offers the potential to transform how we acquire images of the subsurface in urban areas. To date, the enormous potential of this method is only just being realised. The objective of our research is to investigate the performance of dark fibre DAS for seismic imaging in urban settings, with the aim of working out how best to acquire and process this type of data. We will acquire data using the B-NET telecommunications network, which is a 250 km-long fibre-optic network running across the city of Bristol (owned by Bristol City Council). We will use this data to identify how to produce the best quality DAS seismic images - for example what types of seismic source are best, how best to set up the DAS acquisition unit, and how best to process the resulting data. One of the major challenges of DAS seismic acquisition in urban areas is that background noise levels are likely to be high. This background noise could degrade the quality of our imaging. To address this, we will develop the use of state-of-the-art artificial intelligence algorithms to remove the background noise, improving the quality of our resulting images. All of the data that we acquire and all of the machine learning algorithms that we develop will be posted to publicly available repositories. This will provide an extremely valuable resource for researchers and commercial geophysical companies, both in the UK and globally, who are working on the development of this technology.

The United Kingdom has rapidly ageing civil infrastructure. The ability to re-use deep foundation systems and construct new ones more efficiently will pave the way for considerable savings in financial and carbon resources. Geotechnical engineers frequently rely on past records and experience to design foundations. Foundation performance in the stiff deposits in the UK is difficult to estimate and is often reliant on preliminary pile tests to failure being available. If these tests are not available then very conservative design assumptions are used. This research project will provide the UK geotechnical community with an openly accessible database of pile load tests in UK soil deposits. Much of the data for the database will be sourced from the literature and consultants' records. Using the database, different models that can be used to predict pile settlement response will be compared statistically and re-calibrated. Estimates of 'reserve capacity' in UK foundation systems will also be made to search for insights into the potential for foundation re-use in future construction projects. The results of the analysis can also be used to derive improved partial factors for pile design. These can be used in new and updated codes of practice and design guides. A user friendly web-portal will be developed so that designers and researchers can rapidly access the underlying datasets in the database. This will allow others to calibrate their own models for pile behaviour.

In the UK and globally, the slope failures of various sizes are crucially affecting the sustainable development of resilient cities, as its occurrence can significantly threaten the populations, infrastructures, public services, and environment. For example, the British Geological Survey has estimated that 10% of slopes in the UK are classified as at moderate to significant landslide risk, with more than 7% of the main transport networks located in these areas. These slopes may fail during prolonged periods of wet weather or more intensive short duration rainfall events. To date, the public awareness of slope failure risk is high, but our understanding of its fundamental failure mechanism and countermeasures are still very limited. This is mainly due to the difficulties in analysing the multiscale responses and characterize the spatial inhomogeneity of material properties of slopes. Laboratory and numerical investigations with well-developed empirical models can explain the general features of some specific slope failure events but cannot be applied universally. Some challenging issues need to be addressed, such as i) How to develop reliable mathematical models with multiscale modelling capability to analyse the progressive failure of slopes? ii) How to address the spatial variabilities and uncertainties of real slopes, e.g. material property, fractures, fluid permeability? iii) How to accurately estimate the spreading of landslide and its impact on infrastructures? The fundamental scientific issue of these challenges is the weakening mechanism of inhomogeneous slopes at different scales as it determines the slope responses under various geological and environmental conditions. The proposed research aims to explore the fundamental mechanism of progressive slope failure and its impacts on infrastructures via a multiscale and probabilistic modelling approach. It enables the large deformation of slopes to be conveniently analysed by FEM as boundary value problem (BVP), while the local fracturing, cracking, or discontinuous behaviours of soil to be evaluated in smaller discrete subdomains through granular mechanics by DEM. The boundary condition of DEM assembly is derived from the global deformation of FEM meshes. In the analysis, the soil/rock properties (e.g. elastic modulus, friction coefficient, strength, and fluid permeability) will be evaluated as random fields with spatial variabilities. The numerical modelling can effectively bridge the gap between the microscopic material properties and the overall macroscopic slope responses. In the numerical modelling, the contributions of material inhomogeneity and discontinuity to slope failure and subsequence landslide spreading can be effectively investigated. The internal fracture would occur naturally when the loading stress exceeds the particle bonding strength at the microscale, which avoids the use of some phenomenological constitutive laws in conventional continuum modelling. As a multidisciplinary research, this project will involve the subjects of geotechnical engineering, computational geotechnics, geology, statistics, soil/rock mechanics and granular mechanics. The proposed numerical model will benefit all researchers and stakeholders in land planning and management by providing efficient and reliable numerical modelling approaches. This will support the landslide risk evaluation, hazard mitigation and long-term land management, from which the environmental, social, and economic benefits can be achieved. As a result, the decision makers would have greater confidence in slope failure risk assessments on which they are basing their infrastructure investment considerations. Consequently, hazard warning systems, protections and land utilization regulations can be implemented, so that the loss of lives and properties can be minimized without investing in long-term, costly projects of ground stabilization.

Carbon fibre reinforced polymers (CFRP), with their superior combination of stiffness, strength, thermal stability, light weight and corrosion resistance have been leading contenders in various applications, ranging from aerospace to ground transportation, construction industries to sporting goods. The global transition of aircraft with composite architecture is estimated to contribute 15%-20% of industry CO2 reduction targets by 2050, due to the lightweight design. Strengthening of structural members using CFRP is one of the most commonly used methods in the construction industry to prolong the life of existing structures. An increasingly significant amount of CFRP composite waste is being generated as large quantities of such materials starting life in the 1970's applications reach their 50-year service life. As these materials are thermoset, their decomposition and recycling are an urgent worldwide challenge. The existing recycling techniques generally require complicated processes, expensive facilities or toxic chemicals. Because the existing recycling methods need shredding or milling of the CFRP composite before recycling, the recycled carbon fibres have low commercial values. Moreover, the existing recycling methods focus on recovering fibres and the resin remains waste. This project will develop international leading technologies of recovering carbon fibres from end-of-service-life (EOSL) carbon fibre reinforced polymer (CFRP) composites. The recovering process will be operated under ambient temperature and pressure. It will be zero waste and the recovered fibres will maintain the original dimensions and strengths. The transformative recycling methodology of this project will be based on the award-winning technology, the Electrically driven Hetero-catalytic Decomposition (EHD) method, patented by the applicants. The reclaimed fibres will be fabricated into continuous fibre yarns. Potential cost savings of more than 20%-83% and energy savings of 82%-98% have been predicted for using recycling technologies. In addition to using recycled fibres, this project will incorporate low environmental impact bio-resins in CFRP composites and demonstrate their applications in aviation and construction industries through thorough testing and modelling. A cradle to grave Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) will be carried out to provide data for optimisation of resources and minimisation of environmental impacts. This collaborative project will take advantage of supplementary international leading expertise from the UK and Chinese partners to deliver transformative technologies to harness the full value of end of service life CFRP composites for a circular economy. The project team will use their wide networks of contacts to actively engage with key stakeholders in the entire supply chain of the composite industry in both the UK and China to ensure the widest interest in and take up of the outcome of the project.